The Climb

The Climb is the central system of advancement in the world of The Tower, combining physical ascent, supernatural progression, economic ambition, and personal purpose. It is a profession, a danger, and a philosophy: people travel from the edges of civilization to earn Classes, accept quests, gain levels, acquire Relics, and move upward through increasingly difficult Floors. For William Oh, the Climb changes from a necessary first step into a deliberate campaign to seize power, uncover the Tower’s mysteries, and eventually make the entire structure his own.

Definition and Conditions

The Climb requires entering The Tower and surviving its layered environment long enough to obtain a Class and develop the abilities associated with it. Travel time varies sharply by origin. Some Aspirants spend days or weeks reaching the place where they can earn their Classes, while people living in the frigid wastes at the furthest edges of civilization may require months. William Oh’s route is unusually short by comparison: he needs only an hour to reach the relevant site, although he must first obtain basic supplies, including a sling, ammunition, pemmican, and a waterskin.

The process is governed by The System rather than by ambition alone. William Oh’s first offering of pemmican to a Class Trial Altar is consumed by a descending beam of light, but the sacrifice is judged suboptimal and fails to generate a Class Seed. The Climb therefore begins with a material barrier: advancement depends on understanding what the system accepts, not merely on willingness to risk one’s life. Once William Oh succeeds, the System presents his primary abilities and he becomes a full-blooded Climber, converting aspiration into an operative status with practical consequences.

Routes, Progression, and Risk

Climbing is structured as a sequence of quests and thresholds. After reaching level five during his first Establishing Quest, William Oh receives a new command to ascend to the 2nd Floor. The System ranks his performance at 1053rd among that year’s Aspirants, a reminder that progress is simultaneously personal and competitive. Reaching level five also reduces experience gained in the Hunting Grounds and on the 1st Floor, making continued residence below less profitable and turning upward movement into a practical necessity rather than a purely heroic preference.

The System offers two methods of ascent. Established routes are slow, safe, and reliable. Clearing a Key Site on the 1st Floor is quick, dangerous, and rewarding, because it opens an inter-floor Door. The distinction becomes more severe above the 5th Floor, where established routes cease to exist and securing Key Locations becomes the only means of ascending or descending. The Climb thus transforms geography into a progression mechanic: movement is not simply travel through a setting, but the reward for defeating the setting’s control points.

A bus provides another way to exploit the structure. The fastest route to the next Floor is to follow behind one and help clear its Key Site. The rules are permissive enough that a Climber receives credit for participating without sabotaging the other Climbers. Yet William Oh and Loth reject the shortcut while still Acclimating, because Loth argues that entering a higher Floor below the maximum level permitted for the current Floor would be foolish. The scene establishes a recurring tension within the Climb: speed can be purchased with exposure, while preparation delays advancement but preserves the possibility of surviving it.

Two Kinds of Climber

Gertrude’s history gives the Climb a social and generational dimension. She once Climbed as high as the Twelfth Floor, where she witnessed good people die and bad people prosper before abandoning the life. Her account divides Climbers into two broad types. Some seek money and power, eventually stopping somewhere between the Eighth and Fifteenth Floors after carving out a small kingdom for themselves. Others become addicted to the challenge and to uncovering the mystery of The Tower, continuing not because ascent promises a comfortable domain but because the unknown itself has become the objective.

This distinction also separates William Oh from his parents. His parents belong to the second type, the mystery-driven Climbers who continue upward for the challenge. William Oh initially frames his ambition in more material and confrontational terms. He chooses the Tenth Floor as an achievable goal and plans to establish a Lordship there, funnel money and Relics back to his Demesne, pacify the entire Floor, and repeat the process until the whole Tower belongs to him. The plan turns the Climb into a program of conquest, administration, and accumulation rather than a simple escape from poverty or danger.

William Oh later describes himself as a distinct kind of Climber: the William Oh type. He admits that he avoids thinking too deeply about the strange things he has seen, but he also refuses to rest once he reaches a high level. His stated aim is to conquer The Tower once and for all. The formulation combines skepticism with total commitment. He will not adopt his parents’ mystery-seeking purpose, yet he cannot remain satisfied with the limited kingdom that Gertrude identifies as the usual stopping point.

The Climb as Practice and Identity

The Climb produces identities as much as it tests bodies. William Oh’s successful Class generation changes him from an Aspirant into a Climber, and that change reorganizes the choices available to him. Quests appear, levels acquire strategic importance, experience becomes subject to diminishing returns, and access to higher Floors depends on clearing dangerous sites. The System’s prompts make progression legible as a chain of requirements, but the risks remain physical: William Oh falls, scrambles for ledges, relies on equipment, and must use the abilities and alliances accumulated through earlier stages.

The Climb is also collective despite its competitive structure. Loth’s bucket-sized barrel of soil and food scraps houses dozens of insect species that he controls with ease, turning an improvised container into a field resource during their search through the branching caves. When the tunnels divide, Loth marks their route with arrows made luminous by crushed glowbug juices. Later, when William Oh crosses a dangerous gap and reaches a ledge, Loth throws him a rope and directs him to hold it against the wall. Progress depends not only on individual level or Class but on tools, creatures, improvised infrastructure, and the judgment of companions.

That network extends into the landscape itself. A hatch marked “EMERGENCY ESCAPE” offers a way out of a perilous chamber, even though the iron ladder beneath it has dissolved into a ruddy stain. On the 3rd Floor, heat and ash force William Oh to cancel an Ability and drop Brianna into the ash after carrying her behind a raised ledge. In another operation, Loth considers fireproof rope, flow controls, water tanks, and a timed release of heated water as components of an explosion of steam. Such moments show the Climb not as a clean ladder of personal power but as a negotiation with architecture, materials, weather, creatures, and engineered hazards.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

As a plot structure, The Climb is a hybrid of quest, adventure, ascension, and discovery. Every higher Floor promises greater power while withholding safety, and every successful threshold produces a new decision about whether to consolidate gains or risk them for further ascent. The System supplies the measurable framework—Classes, abilities, levels, quests, rankings, experience penalties, Key Sites, and Doors—while William Oh supplies the expansive interpretation that turns those mechanics into a life project.

The concept also carries a sharp irony. The Climb appears to offer freedom through upward movement, yet the climber is constantly governed by rules: sacrifices can fail, experience can be nerfed, routes can be closed, and access to the next Floor can depend on a Key Site or the approval of a quest structure. William Oh’s response is neither simple obedience nor outright rejection. He studies the rules, exploits permissive ones, prepares before taking shortcuts, and converts each imposed threshold into a future target. The result is an advancement system that both constrains him and gives his ambition a form.

Ultimately, The Climb is the narrative’s measure of what a person is willing to risk for a desired future. Gertrude sees climbers divided between those who settle for power and those who cannot stop seeking the Tower’s answers. Loth treats preparation as a condition of survival. William Oh absorbs both lessons but reshapes them into an even larger claim: ascent will not end at a comfortable Lordship, a high level, or a single revelation. For him, the Climb is complete only when the Tower itself has been conquered.